EDITOR'S CHOICE -- SCOTT SUTTELL

Educational divide finds most Ohio cities in the bottom half

The country's metro areas are dividing into higher-ed haves and have-nots, The New York Timesreports, and the trend generally isn't kind to Ohio cities.

Dayton, for instance, “sits on one side of a growing divide among American cities, in which a small number of metro areas vacuum up a large number of college graduates and the rest struggle to keep those they have.” About 24% of Dayton's adult residents have four-year degrees, well below the average of 32% for U.S. metro areas.

“The winners are cities like Bridgeport, Conn., San Francisco and Raleigh, N.C., where more than 40 percent of the population has a college degree,” The Times says. “Cities like Youngstown, Ohio, Bakersfield, Calif., and Lakeland, Fla., where less than a fifth of the population has a college degree, are being left behind. The divide shows signs of widening as college graduates gravitate to places with a lot of other college graduates and the atmosphere that creates.”

Why does this matter?

“Metro areas where more than one in three adults were college-educated had an average unemployment rate of 7.5 percent earlier this year, compared with 10.5 percent for cities where less than one in six adults had a college degree,” The Times reports, citing data from Edward Glaeser, an economist at Harvard and the author of “Triumph of the City.”

The most-educated market, not surprisingly, is Washington, D.C., with 46.8% of residents having college degrees, up from 22.1% in 1970.

Columbus (also not surprisingly) is the most-educated city in Ohio, with 32.5% of residents possess degrees, up from 12.3% in 1970. Other Ohio markets and their college degree percentages are as follows: Cincinnati, 29.3%; Akron, 28.5%; Cleveland, 27.7%; Dayton, 24.4%; Toledo, 24.3%; and Youngstown, 19.3%.

That doesn't sound good

"It is challenging to assess how much of the weakness in labor markets and tightness in capacity utilization is structural and, therefore, not reversible with broad-based economic growth," Ms. Pianalto said at a National Association for Business Economics event this morning in Cleveland.

"Nonetheless, my current assessment is that the real economy continues to show considerable cyclical weakness," she said. "This assessment, along with my outlook for moderate growth and subdued inflation, calls for today's highly accommodative monetary policy."

MarketWatch.com notes that Ms. Pianalto forecast growth slightly above a 2.5% rate this year and around 3.0% in 2013 and 2014.

"At this pace of growth, I expect that it could take as long as four to five years for the unemployment rate to fall to the 6% rate," Ms. Pianalto said. She added that inflation should run very close to the Fed's target of 2% through 2014.

Top of the heap

Your (almost) daily update on the Sen. Rob Portman-as-VP watch comes from The Washington Post, which handicaps the race with a top-10 contenders list and puts Sen. Portman at No. 1.

The good: If you believe the first rule of vice presidential picks — particularly in the post-Palin age — is “do no harm,” than the Ohio Senator is the guy. He's rock solid on politics and policy — especially spending and budget matters — and has a real statewide political organization in one of the most important swing states in the country.

The bad: There's not all that much of it. (Portman is ranked #1, after all.) He did serve in two different jobs during the Bush Administration and that may not be a connection that the Romney campaign wants to resurrect.

An on-the-record conversation

“Buying a record now is different from when record shops were ubiquitous …,” writes The New York Times. “Despite the continued six-year growth in sales of LPs — that's long-playing records, for the uninitiated — practically all vinyl records today are small-batch boutique pressings. There are limited editions, collector editions, audiophile editions and more.”

In a section of the story devoted to issues faced by collectors, The Times notes that if you're buying records as an investment, you may be disappointed.

“Collectibles in general, you can't anticipate what will be valuable,” says Terry Stewart, who tells the paper he owns “hundreds of thousands of records.”

To be valuable, he says, a record must be rare and in demand, which is hard to know in advance. The best bet, The Times says, “is to give what someone enjoys, regardless of investment value. At worst, he is stuck with a record he loves.”

The paper notes that not everybody collects records for the sound quality, often described as richer, smoother and warmer than CDs or digital tracks.

Of visitors to the Hall of Fame's gift shop who buy vinyl, Mr. Stewart says: “Half the kids are buying them to listen to; half are buying them as artifacts.”

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